The first patient who was administered ‘plasma therapy’ has now fully recovered and was discharged on Sunday from the hospital in the national capital. He had been weaned off ventilator support seven days ago.
The 49-year-old male patient from Delhi had tested Covid-19 positive on April 4 and was admitted the same day at the Covid facility at Max Hospital in Saket with moderate symptoms and a history of fever and respiratory issues. When the patient showed no improvement in his condition, his family requested the hospital for administration of plasma therapy on compassionate grounds, a first of its kind treatment modality that was used for this disease in India.
The family came forward to arrange a donor for extracting plasma. The donor had recovered from the infection three weeks before her donation and again tested Covid-19 negative. After receiving the treatment, the patient showed progressive improvement and by the fourth day was weaned off ventilator support on the morning of April 18. He continued on supplementary oxygen thereafter.
He had started taking oral feed within 24-hours of being off ventilator support. He was shifted to a room with round-the-clock monitoring on Monday after testing negative twice within 24 hours.
The group medical director of Max Healthcare and senior director of Institute of Internal Medicine, Dr Sandeep Budhiraja, said, “We are delighted that the therapy worked well in his case, opening a new treatment opportunity during these challenging times.”
